Blake Robert Templeton explains how hardship squeezes out hidden emotions like fear, doubt, and bitterness. Praying hard from a place of personal need doesn't work because those prayers come from a manipulated, self-focused place. Real prayer requires recognizing what suffering actually brings up in you.
You're not being sourced by the King. In a hardship, you're squeezed. And so what you're most full of comes out. Fear, doubt, worry, anxiety, offense, bitterness, anger, resentment. All that comes out because you're being squeezed. It's too late right then to be like, oh, now I want to go try to— I'mma press in hard. Because then when you press in hard and you pray hard, you're praying from earth to heaven. Those prayers don't get past the clouds because you're doing it out of a manipulated scenario, trying to get God to do something because you got a need.
